No, mainly just the most trivial ones. There are actually many interesting encounters in the base game already - the problem is that these are often very rare. This has been changed for the mod as well, so players can expect too see previously rare encounters more often than before.

No, mainly just the most trivial ones. There are actually many interesting encounters in the base game already - the problem is that these are often very rare. This has been changed for the mod as well, so players can expect too see previously rare encounters more often than before.

so you're also changing Enemy Diversity i guess for me it felt like Disc 1 especially suffered from lack of diversity...even their Levels being FIXED instead of SCALING for so many areas during Disc 1 is a bit inducing...it does mean different MAGIC is available sooner though which means you want to be careful not to make it too easy to get OP i guess...but speeding up the first couple hours of game-play a bit that was does seem nice

so you're also changing Enemy Diversity i guess for me it felt like Disc 1 especially suffered from lack of diversity...even their Levels being FIXED instead of SCALING for so many areas during Disc 1 is a bit inducing...it does mean different MAGIC is available sooner though which means you want to be careful not to make it too easy to get OP i guess...but speeding up the first couple hours of game-play a bit that was does seem nice

Yes, as enemy variety or lack thereof is a balancing matter, this point had to be tackled in the mod as well. The results might still not be optimal, as there aren't that many different enemies in the game to begin with - which in turn makes it tough to find enough matching enemies for a certain area or enemies that fit well in the same battle (a soldier alongside a T-Rexaur would be a no-go for me). There should be still a noticable improvement compared to the original though.

By the way, isn't it just the Fire Cavern where random enemies' levels are fixed on disc 1? That's actually how it is in the vanilla as well as in the mod. Not so sure what exactly you are referring to here. In case you meant the limited scaling from the mod: You usually won't even reach these level caps as long as you don't spend a lot of time power-leveling (limiting exactly this is one of the reasons for the change). I also think it's better to not have too many different enemies at the beginning of the game already, to leave some surprises for the later stages.

Yes, as enemy variety or lack thereof is a balancing matter, this point had to be tackled in the mod as well. The results might still not be optimal, as there aren't that many different enemies in the game to begin with - which in turn makes it tough to find enough matching enemies for a certain area or enemies that fit well in the same battle (a soldier alongside a T-Rexaur would be a no-go for me). There should be still a noticable improvement compared to the original though.

By the way, isn't it just the Fire Cavern where random enemies' levels are fixed on disc 1? That's actually how it is in the vanilla as well as in the mod. Not so sure what exactly you are referring to here. In case you meant the limited scaling from the mod: You usually won't even reach these level caps as long as you don't spend a lot of time power-leveling (limiting exactly this is one of the reasons for the change). I also think it's better to not have too many different enemies at the beginning of the game already, to leave some surprises for the later stages.

Yeah i decided to have fun with it, instead of being too strict with my enemy combinations yeah Fire Cavern but even BOSSES in the game tend to scale only UP TO a certain LVL...for EG... FAKE PRESIDENT + GEROGERO only scale up to lvl 12 apparently ... many other examples i could give

and then don't get me started on how many have STATIC stats then don't go up with LEVEL...SPR SPEED etc... I'm Looking at you...

even changing the LVL RANGES for enemy seems like a fun way to make it less predictable then just LVL 20-29 = MEDIUM...

indeed can't ruin disc 1 and give you access to everything, it's about finding a nice in between while not having so many 1 hit kills where the AI hasn't even had a chance to pull off a move

Hello, I've been playing this mod since less than a week and there's some moment that I really had to try hardFor exemple, in the second dream of Laguna, when you have to fight 3 waves of monsters, the last one is really insane, I had to farm like a retard to have lots of hp, since they have 2 AoE which deal around 800/900 damage and 2 of my member had 1k hp and the last one ~600 because I did not unlocked the HP. I had to retry this fight until they decided to not do it at all. Last one, where I am playing right now, right after getting Irving and getting to Deiling city, Tauros et Taurux, the AoE (when they attack together) is insane, 1500 damage to all my team, even with protect it deals a lot, I don't know if i'm a really big noob but I love this mod for the difficulty.

And I don't know if the ATB Wait is working as intended because when I'm in the menu in a battle, when I am looking for my magic, the enemy still attack me instead of freezing the ATB but mine freezes.

The difficulty spike at the Centra Excavation site is intended, to motivate players to look for new spells in case they still don't have anything better than Cure, Fire, Bliizzard or Thunder for junctioning. I see that the last battle against the two Cyborgs can be frustrating, especially if they use Boomerang Sword early - so I might tone them down a bit in the next update. All in all, stabilization is key in this battle. You can draw Protect and Shell from the nearby Gespers if you don't have any more left, and Dispel from Elastoids which is a decent upgrade on HP over just Cure. Of course, it is very beneficial to have HP-Junctions available for all 3 characters when you fight them. They are also susceptible to Slow. You can also save yourself the waves of soldiers before the two Cyborgs by activating all the traps inside the Excavation site, to make things a little easier.

In order to beat the Brothers, make sure to have at least Zombie on HP for everyone, which you can get by modding the Zombie Powders you got from the Gerogero Boss or by Drawing it from Blood Souls around Galbadia Garden. Regen and Demi are also available at this point in the game, in case Zombie is not enough. In battle, try to stabilize as soon as possible and hit them with their elemental weaknesses. The battle is intended to be very challenging and long, given the fact that it is entirely optional.

About the ATB: I know it can appear the way you described, but it's working as always. In the case of the Cyborgs, they are just very fast (especially after throwing their weapon), and Minotaur immediately uses a follow-up attack after being healed (Sacred does this too, but sometimes he just heals without doing a attack immediately after). I would recommend lowering the battle speed in order to have more time to react to certain moves accordingly.

Hello, here to provide more feedback from my experiences. To give a bit of perspective, I have been grinding a bit more than I ever have during normal gameplay in order to stay "ahead of the curve" because I know the purpose of this mod is to make the game more difficult. I'm not doing Korean MMO-grindfest type gameplay, but I am taking on more random encounters in order to gain AP for important junctions before you traditionally earn them through the course of normal gameplay.

SeeD mission in Dollet: This portion of the game seems well balanced, actually. I will say that running into double Red G-Army soldiers was actually quite threatening, they do a lot of hard damage and aren't pushovers. My characters without HP-Junction were actually killed a few times throughout the mission (importantly, this depleted my supply of Phoenix Down, more on that later). I didn't have any problems with Elvoret or Biggs and Wedge encounters, seemed solid. I tried to kill the X-ATM092 the traditional way, I had stocked up on Lightning Magic but it wasn't nearly enough to kill him.

Timber mission: An important thing I noticed is how few opportunities you have prior to this battle to stock up on items you need in Timber. I did not purchase any Phoenix Downs prior to leaving Balamb, and unless I am mistaken, there is no opportunity to purchase more from a vendor within the city. With two Phoenix Down left and with a party member dead, I had to force the story forward (instead of exploring the city's side quests) in order to use a one-time rest at the inn of the leader of the Forest Fox because the regular inn is not available while the town is under occupation. If I could give a suggestion, I think having the G-Soldiers you encounter while running around town drop Phoenix Downs may alleviate this issue.

Battle vs. the President's body double: Probably the hardest battle I'd encountered so far. Again, I tried to kill him the traditional way a few times but ended up wiping and getting a game over. At this point I became very conscious of the changes you made to character's stats and strengths. I had already noticed that Selphie and Squall are much better at using magic then Zell, but after a few wipes I completely rebalanced my character's magic inventories and Battle abilities via Junction to maximize their effectiveness. I stopped equipping the Magic command and gave Zell the Item command instead; I'd given Selphie the exclusive job of casting our party's strongest heals at Gerogero. I have to say that I am very, VERY pleased with how this aspect of your rebalance is turning out.

Post-Timber: After leaving the train station at West Academy, I instead traveled to Dollet to use the in-game vendors and purchased the Phoenix Downs that I felt that I needed. At this point I decided to do some more AP grinding and unlock Diablos along with the the 3rd HP Junction, which I felt was increasingly necessary. I did wipe to Diablos a few of times, but after some more junction optimization (now getting Rinoa to Stock/Cast Demi because of her advanced Magic stat) I was able to beat him. After getting him to low HP his physical attacks increased in frequency and this is where he was the most dangerous, it seems his speed is a bit high. Overall, I don't have suggestions for this encounter. His difficulty seems reasonable for an optional boss encounter.

The Centra Excavation: I'd gone into Centra without much problem. I was quite upset because I did wipe and lose about 20 minutes worth of progress to a single Elastoid, though. After they go haywire, their spellcast (forgot it's name, sorry) casts for about 800 damage to all party members. Without prior knowledge that this powerful attack would occur, I lost two party members to the first cast and before I could run away or even fill my Laguna's ATB bar, he used the same attack again without me being able to do anything. Lesson learned, maybe I should pay more attention to what the enemies are doing. I did encounter a Gesper and learned about their magic inventory which I took advantage of to get a full stock of Protect and Shell on two characters. I'm not sure whether this is intended, but they present no threat to the party at all. Their single physical attacks inflicts only about 150 damage, and they often attack each other and heal the party. For such a powerful defensive junctioning magic, I think maybe they should be a bit harder to get than through a Gesper that most likely won't kill you.

The final encounter at the Excavation site: I previously used the site's defensive measures to get rid of some of the enemy soldiers that attack you, and that was fortunate for me because this encounter is RIDICULOUSLY HARD. At this point, Kiros had 1000 HP, Laguna had about 1300 HP. Ward had 1500 with 100 Protect and Shell junctioned to physical and magic damage reduction. Despite this, I still died to this about 5 or 6 times total, each time rotating magic and junctions absolutely maximize the amount of damage that my party can take. During the final encounter with the two black-suited Esthar Soldiers, the amount of damage they can do in succession is absolutely ridiculous. I'd often get hit with double Boomerang Sword followed quickly by their physical attack or Aero, which did 400 damage or 800 damage respectively. I only had two options to begin the encounter: try to cast GF as quickly as possible on all of my characters to absorb one of these blows, or hope that I started the encounter with enough ATB to even get off a Protect on any of my characters. I quickly learned that the 2nd option was not really feasible because one or two of my characters would die to the incoming attacks anyway, and the AI was smart enough to start casting Aero against me before I could also cast Shell on anyone/everyone. In the end, the option that worked for me was to use Mega Potions to negate Boomerang Sword damage and heal the entire party as I used others to cast protective spells. Overall I am displeased with this encounter because it is too difficult and because I feel like any chance to beat it is purely RNG dependent. I don't feel like I earned my victory here, despite my efforts to maximize my characters defensive potential at this juncture of the game. I feel like I beat it because I got lucky and the enemy skipped a turn or two.

Overall I am happy to report that I am VERY satisfied with the mod overall though. If I may offer one more important bit of feedback, and this may be an extreme suggestion, but would you consider disabling the GF command in battle? There's not really a lot of strategy to them offensively, they do too much damage to regular monsters and the most efficient option to winning battles is just to cast one and kill everything at once. I'm tired of watching these animations and being so disengaged once they're cast that I'm looking at my phone instead of my screen. I can only think of one strategic use for GFs in battle, which I had to employ against the Esthar soldiers: sacrifice the GF in order to eat an otherwise deadly or disadvantageous attack. I could see this sacrifice being useful later as an intriguing option for early Ultimecia's castle, but otherwise I feel like they are too efficient not to use throughout the game.

Likewise, I don't use Zell in my party any more because his potential damage is so much less than the GF attacks or casted magic that he's pretty useless. I'm not sure how to fix this issue other than maybe making him naturally more tanky than other characters?

SeeD mission in Dollet: This portion of the game seems well balanced, actually. I will say that running into double Red G-Army soldiers was actually quite threatening, they do a lot of hard damage and aren't pushovers. My characters without HP-Junction were actually killed a few times throughout the mission (importantly, this depleted my supply of Phoenix Down, more on that later). I didn't have any problems with Elvoret or Biggs and Wedge encounters, seemed solid. I tried to kill the X-ATM092 the traditional way, I had stocked up on Lightning Magic but it wasn't nearly enough to kill him.

It's good to hear that the Elite Soldiers provided a bit of a challenge to you. That's exactly what I had in mind for them: Noticably more robust over generic G-Soldiers while dealing good damage, without turning them into killing machines. The main reason for making them stronger is their interactions with other enemies, which were hardly ever seen in the base game, because pretty much all soldiers die after one or two hits. To beat the X-ATM092, it is important to always be prepared for an incoming Ray-Bomb (it is used like every 5th turn) and to damage it at the right time in order to make it go into repair mode again as soon as possible. The Double spells from Balamb Garden are also very helpful here, should there be some left.

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Timber mission: An important thing I noticed is how few opportunities you have prior to this battle to stock up on items you need in Timber. I did not purchase any Phoenix Downs prior to leaving Balamb, and unless I am mistaken, there is no opportunity to purchase more from a vendor within the city. With two Phoenix Down left and with a party member dead, I had to force the story forward (instead of exploring the city's side quests) in order to use a one-time rest at the inn of the leader of the Forest Fox because the regular inn is not available while the town is under occupation. If I could give a suggestion, I think having the G-Soldiers you encounter while running around town drop Phoenix Downs may alleviate this issue.

There is a vendor in front of the pub entrance that can be accessed after completing the train mission. You probably just overlooked her. Still, it is indeed advisable to buy some items before leaving Balamb because of the Gerogero boss fight. While we are at it: Inside Timber pub, buying the man the right drink is now more worth it instead of just showing him the Buel card.

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Battle vs. the President's body double: Probably the hardest battle I'd encountered so far. Again, I tried to kill him the traditional way a few times but ended up wiping and getting a game over. At this point I became very conscious of the changes you made to character's stats and strengths. I had already noticed that Selphie and Squall are much better at using magic then Zell, but after a few wipes I completely rebalanced my character's magic inventories and Battle abilities via Junction to maximize their effectiveness. I stopped equipping the Magic command and gave Zell the Item command instead; I'd given Selphie the exclusive job of casting our party's strongest heals at Gerogero. I have to say that I am very, VERY pleased with how this aspect of your rebalance is turning out.

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Likewise, I don't use Zell in my party any more because his potential damage is so much less than the GF attacks or casted magic that he's pretty useless. I'm not sure how to fix this issue other than maybe making him naturally more tanky than other characters?

Good you realized that Zell is not suited for taking the role of a mage at all. Even with Mag-J available, other characters will be noticably more proficient in spellcasting (the order is Rinoa > Selphie > Quistis > Squall > Irvine > Zell). As mentioned in the changes overview, his low Magic and Spirit stats are meant as a penalty for his high HP and Strength. The fact that physical attacks lack the solid raw power of spells might lead to the impression that having Zell in the party is not worth it. Keep it mind though that physical attacks rise with Strength exponentially, so Zell will become a valuable fighter as his Strength stat rises. If he gets Ifrit and his second weapon (the required Dragon Fins can be received from the Grendels in the forest before Galbadia Garden, or Card Mod), while having something like Aero junctioned to Strength, his Strength should be around 100 - which is pretty much the point where physical attacks start getting strong enough to rival the power of spells or GF.

About the Centra Excavation site: I rechecked the damage of Elastoid's Reflect Beam and 800 damage is indeed a bit much for this point in the game. Gespers have always been attacking allies and foes alike - a unique trait that I wanted to keep for the mod. It is correct that they are relatively weak compared to other enemies at the site, but keep in mind that they start using Degenerator from medium levels onwards. The final two Cyborgs will be nerfed with the next update coming later today:

- Boomerang Sword will deal 200-300 less damage- The critical hit rate from Shotgun and their Punch attack will be reduced- Their speed multiplier after throwing their weapon will be reduced from x2 to x1.5

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If I may offer one more important bit of feedback, and this may be an extreme suggestion, but would you consider disabling the GF command in battle? There's not really a lot of strategy to them offensively, they do too much damage to regular monsters and the most efficient option to winning battles is just to cast one and kill everything at once.

I wouldn't really like to remove them altogether, but I'm considering lowering their base power a bit. For now, further increasing Zells base Strength as part the update should help with dealing some quick damage during battles. Which spells are you currently having junctioned to Strength by the way? After completing the Centra Excavation site, it should be at least Aero, which can be easily obtained from Thrust Aevis around Timber.

Again, thank you for your input. It is really interesting to discuss all these little details that hardly ever mattered in the original game. Feel free to share more impressions in the future.

More Seifer battles? Might be difficult to find some good placements for them throughout the story. But I'll keep that idea in mind.

As for the castle bosses, have you already beaten them in the mod? Sphinxara, Krysta and Tri-Point are still not that hard as there have to be some easier bosses due to the seals, but the rest should be pretty rough, even with solid junctions.

So I'm at the Tomb of the Unknown King, and the Brothers are absolutely wiping the floor with me... I'm wondering, are they meant to be obtainable as early as disc 1, or do I need to come back on disc 2 after I've beefed up my characters a bit?

They are meant to be obtainable right away and provide important tools for stabilization themselves: Protect and Double. So start the battle by casting these on every character. As for the Mad Cow Special attack, you have to find a way to reduce or negate its damage. It is earth-elemental and used by Sacred every ~10th turn as long as Minotaur is alive. So you can kind of predict when it lands. If you feel like they are generelly too fast, lowering battle speed might help.

i have another idea for your mod, on the end of disc 2 in the garden where you get the keycodes, how about you put bosses there insted to get the keycodes to unlock the doors in the garden at the end of disc 2, what do you think about that idea

The fight on top of the desert prison is very overtuned against you. Turn 1 meltdown for 900-1300 damage depending if its the char with spr-v or not. Then the robots can either take half of your hp with missle or ray bomb everyone for 1k-1.2k and apply vit0 to the whole party. If you try to set up defensivly wiht double + barrier + shell you almost always will lose a character. If they dont split their damage evenly then its insta loss. This entire fight feels more like RNG than skill. If you manage to set up or survive the inital onlaught then the captain in the back cast curaga for 3.5k heal and he will spam that. Either all of the numbers need to be reduced or their speed has to be slower or the captain needs to not have aura curaga and shell all at the same time.

Edit: Beat the fight with a perfect set of circumstances. Got protect off on Rinoa before enemy took action, captain used aura instead of meltdown first, squall displled and rinoa queued up quez. meltdown on quez and no other attacks to it. Zell gets hit with micro missle x2 to be put into crisis, spam dolphin blow to finish 1 robot off. Squall heals zell. quez goes off. Queue up brothers on zell to take a hit, heal zell to full. queue quez. robot hits brothers killing it, captain shoots squall. quez goes of a second time wihtout getting hit, second robot dies. attack captain till dead.

So for me to win that fight the enemy didnt use ray bomb, or aura more than once. They also didnt hit the GF that was at 70 hp nor did they use curaga or land any critical hits. Like I said in the initial part of the post this fight relies way to heavily on RNG. I had an attempt where i got hit with meltown followed by ray bomb x 2 before my first action went off.

Thanks for your input. This is one of the battles where defeating the enemies in the right order is key - otherwise you succumb in the chaos very easily. The following strat has been very reliable in my test runs and should keep the RNG factor to a minimum:

You have to focus your attacks on the Elite Solider and kill him off quickly to avoid any more Ray-Bombs and Auras on the GIM52As. Start the battle with Slow on the Elite Soldier by either casting Slow or having it junctioned to ST-Atk, then build up your defenses. Then hit him with Double Bio until he dies (his HP aren't very high). If you got hit by a Ray-Bomb and are under Vit0, don't waste time with curing the status (but have Protect and Shell up), just kill that soldier as soon as possible. You basically won the battle if you manage to do so, as the GIM52As alone aren't much of a threat.

As for the Meltdown and Double Ray-Bomb opener, the chances for this to happen are very low. But I'll see what I can do to avoid this further.

So I watched that part from your latest stream and noticed a few things:

- Your GF distribution was not optimal. Brothers should be paired with Quezacotl because of their junction abilities. Quezacotl, Carbuncle and Diablos on separate characters so Mag-J is available for all characters. You can have two Spr-Junctions at this point (from Shiva and Brothers).

- You could have used the 5 Mega-Potions you found in the prison for countering Ray-Bomb.

- Your approach with beating the robots first is legit too of course, but relying on GF is too slow. Quistis could have learned Aqua Breath with the Water Crystals from the Chimeras and used this against the robots for tremendous damage.

Please do not misunderstand what I was trying to convey. I am enjoying the mod, alot. But I would only consider myself slightly above the average player in terms of the mechanics of FF8 in particular. I am playing with no card refine for magic or upgrading weapons that I do not have the magazine for. Essentially I am trying to beat the game with what the "average" player would consider without cheesing an easy way to power up or being forced to farm. Its a good practice when testing and providing feedback to see ALL possible methods to defeat a boss, even if it is not the optimal way to beat it as a majority of players would not consider switching to bio to double cast burst the back row enemy while going for 100% optimal gf loadout. It is a fine balance of being beatable at a suboptimal level while still being challenging with an optimized strat. And after seeing you provide multiple different strategies I understand more your logic behind the fight. I do think it could be toned down by 5-10% and still maintain that balance of challenge. Even if you leave it as is I will come back to it eventually and play through the entire mod using a different strategy.

Nah, I'm totally fine with your feedback and take it as an opportunity to make improvements to the mod. Besides that, it is very interesting to get impressions from someone a bit further into the game already.

One of my goals for the mod was including boss battles that call for strategic approaches as well - battles where character stats and junctions are only secondary. And the prison boss battle is certainly one of them. I was thinking about this particular one for a really long time and wondered how far I can go here. Getting a Game Over on the first try should be totally normal and that's why the save point the floor below is now visible. But multiple fails isn't exactly what was planned either, so yeah - toning down the battle by 5-10% seems reasonable.

So for the next update, expect some smaller changes to this battle. I'm also thinking about buffing Siren by adding in Slow to her attack, which would be really useful for this battle. I know that getting a cast off can be difficult, but that's why there's things like Silver Mails, GF compatibility items, Protect and so on. Just use all that stuff that was next to useless in vanilla - that's what the mod has been made for too.

Changes to the Prison boss: Ray-Bomb and Meltdown damage is slightly reduced and GIM52As generally do less damage under Aura. I would have liked to make it so that Ray-Bomb is never used the first couple of turns, but setting it that way breaks other GIM52A encounters using current tools, so that has to do for now. You can also get an extra Mega-Potion from one on the Moombas now, if that helps.